I met Charles Potts in 1970. I was living in Minneapolis and was starting a writing workshop, so I took the unusual tack of tacking postcard notices around in the West Bank neighborhood. No one locally ever contacted me about the postcards. But a visitor to Minneapolis, in the visage of a bona fide bearded beat poet from the west, who was passing through Minnesota in his microbus on a poetry tour of America, found himself, as poets do, standing and copying a stranger's phone number from a telephone pole. Charles Potts called and asked to visit me. We huddled as equals, drank iced tea, sized up one another's poetics, and agreed to stay in touch.

We have been friends ever since. Good friends. I sometimes feel Charlie knows what is in my heart better, and respects it more, than I myself do.

Charles was vastly more advanced than I was. He, even in his twenties, knew who he was, knew how the world worked, and knew what he wanted to do. I'm still working on all three. Talking to him, and corresponding later, I felt I was communing directly with the wild prophetic side of American poetry.

Most poetry I read in the early 70s was elliptical as all get-out, dreamy, posey, and mainly about the self's deep interest in itself. Charlie was doing something nearly the opposite. You could feel the gravel under his poems -- they were roughcut, fearless, and unfailingly straight about what they wanted to say. You didn't wonder what psychic level Charlie was writing from (8? 13? lingerie and notions?) any more than you'd wonder what level a gun pointed at your darkest suspicions and prejudices was on. Even when his poems were funny they were dead-on serious, like Lenny Bruce on a good night. I had to be reminded he was a youngest, not an oldest child, because of that quality of gravitas.

Anyway, on to the poems in Nature Lovers. Charlie wrote these poems in 1989, under the influence of his study in the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming, and readings in the microstructure of cognition. The title is a tip-off to Charlie's ragged irony -- because it is impossible for humans to truly love nature, because we are helplessly separated from it by language and consciousness -- the makings of poetry itself. "I go way back with writers who identify themselves with nature," he writes in an afterword. "Wordsworth, for the mystifying and mystical unity to be fond there; Menzu (Mencius) for his insistence that the entire state has to operate in obeisance to natural law; and Lucretius, who said poets should never lose the power to irritate."

Each poem is a meditation, or an editorial cartoon, about some aspect of nature. Listen to the fussy cadence and the caustic syllogistics, and tell me you don't hear the unmistakable ring of Menzu in the following:

Natural Causes

"He died of natural causes."

How many times have you relaxed while reading

That sanguine phrase and paused to wonder:

What causes would not be natural?

Car wrecks, overdoses, the fall of Flight DC 10?

Mechanical, pharmaceutical, aeronautical?

If everything is by definition natural,

What's left to experiment on?

Pig out on Haagen Dazs ice cream diet?

Fall down my one-time publisher's nomenclature,

The Empty Elevator Shaft?

Will you pass on a drug bust or a cardiac arrest?

You ask too many questions.

See death of a naturalist,
Watch Hermes put Argus to sleep

With an interminable story.

Bored him to death, naturally.

Maybe that is not a "great" poem, but it is great discourse, and poor, loathed poetry desperately needs this sense of engagement, this sense of mental acuity.

But Charlie Potts's poetry is. His oeuvre is immense and intelligent and so keen. Besides some twenty books of poems, he has written harrowing memoirs about going crazy in the 60s, plus a terrific polemic about U.S. politics, How the South Finally Won the Civil War. Plus, he is a noted publisher and editor. His own presses: Litmus, Inc. in the 60s and 70s, and Tsunami, publisher of the great multilingual magazine published on rag paper, The Temple¸ and Pacific Northwestern Spiritual Poetry, one of the most remarkable anthologies of recent decades.

This little book is one of his most striking collections. In it he achieves what every political poet should ache to do, yet so few try -- graft the confusion of the heart to the evidence of our senses. This is no-nonsense poetry from a visionary who long ago stripped the gears off common sense. His best work swirls the spirits of Ginsberg and Ken Kesey and Phil Ochs at their best, and more anciently, the poets Walt Whitman and William Blake, the pamphleteer Tom Paine, and the mountain man Jim Bridger.

Here's a poem which achieves the same kind of connection, with a more gripping lyricism:

The Stream of Consciousness

The stream of consciousness flows

Effortlessly forward like an unfed brain,
Given nothing new to think about,
Merely rotates in space, the same sounds,
Pictures, and sensations in predictable order.

Who will muddy up this stream,
Then purge and purify the cluttered tableau
Of the extraneous features preventing you
From actualizing your ideal self,
The way you always wanted to look and sound?

The quicksand of the collective unconsciousness
Will tempt you many times
With its lurid renditions of quackery images
Stories in the millennia of Christian denial,
Hallucinated forward at the speed of pain.

Down a lazy river to the polluted sea
The flotsam jettisons thoughtlessly along,
Contributory to a natural disaster.
Throw yourself onto the banks to stimulate
Your freeflowing sense of contrary motion.

Let it work on you. Here is a poem about nothing less than the significance and substance of thought -- everything that means meaning to us. He simultaneously reveres the gift and potential of consciousness, while despairing of our ability to leverage it into truth. Like eschatological Emmett Kellys, the best most of us manage is to sweep the spotlight of our own desire into the ashcan as we depart. The language is unflinchingly ambitious, but never pompous or "poetic." In fact, it's fun -- "flotsam jettisons," indeed. Here's a living, thinking head, giving you its best peek at the dynamic that makes us what we are. Hey, poetry isn't supposed to be important.

We think we love nature, says Charles Potts, but nature doesn't love us back. In fact, you'd be smart to keep a close eye on it, because one of these days, nature's going to get you.

Charles Potts is an experienced poet with more several published works to his credit. Nature Lovers is the latest of his collections and continues to document him as having a unique style and gift for language, images, and speaking to the mind and heart of his reader. The Code Of The Olde West: Get a load of Charlie Coyote,/Hauled before the magistrate by the grammar police/For hunting verbs without a license.//The judge demands to know:/How did you learn the vernacular?/There are correct ways to say the same thing,//Cheap talk from fatigued Sierra Clubbers/Cannot change my mind, your honor./I'm outside the purview of Standard American Englishizers.//Like the taxidermist he will be/If he ever catches anything Stoic,/Sniff this poem and make it snappy naturally./Fill it with linguistic drift.

Across The North Pacific by Charles Potts is a literary tour de force of sweeping, free-verse poems projecting a future torn in three directions by the languages and attached cultures of English, Japanese, and Mandarin. Dividing its pages into spheres of influence, Across The North Pacific culminates in a verbal thunderhead explosion that will leave poetry devotees yearning for more. The North Star: This is not Polaris/But a one man satellite/In permanent geosynchronous orbit/Over the North Pacific/Trying simultaneously to see and understand/All three great North Pacific cultures at the same time.

As one of the poets featured in Will Work for Peace, one might expect me to be a bit biased, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Most poets work in a virtual vacuum, only tenuously connected to each other by the occasional workshop or shared membership in a 'poetry society'. When Brett Axel first approached me for a submission to an anthology he was considering, the names Marge Piercy, Lyn Lifshin, Moshe Bennaroch and so many others were abstractions to me as a fledgling poet. I knew these tremendous writers were 'out there' somewhere, beating down doors with their words and keeping a struggling artform alive. But to think that someday I would ever share a credit with these dynamic modern poets would be a pipe dream at best. It is through the sincere efforts of Brett Axel that many newer voices like mine have an extraordinary opportunity to appear with Pulitzer Prize winners and other poetic heavyweights. By way of an honest review, however, I will say this- not everything in this book will be to your particular liking. I myself came across some works that did not move me in the way the author may have intended. Some imagery can be raw and visceral, using shock value in place of craft at times. But to ignore those voices would be an even more shocking turn of events, so praise be to the editor for not sacrificing his vision to a senseless conformity. As Pete Seeger so aptly put it in his quote, trying to read all these poems at one time would be like trying 'to swallow Manhattan whole'. I say to you- buy this book, read this book, but understand that it's what you do after reading this book that will ultimately define who you could be. Poetry is alive and well, and lives in the blunt pages of Will Work for Peace.

Just amazing start to finish! I like the disregard for fame used in putting the book together. That great poems got in even if they were writtenby nobodys. Look at Roger Bonair-Agard's poem on page 74. Shortly after Will Work For Peace came out he won Slam Nationals, becoming Slam Champion of 1999, which will be getting him lots of offers. But Zeropanik Press didn't need to be told he was good by an award. They could tell by his writing! Good for them and good for all of us because Will Work For Peace is a literary milestone. It's a new standard for all future anthology editors to try to live up to. Thumbs up to Brett Axel and Thumbs up to Zeropanik Press for their guts and integrty.

Brett Axel visited my Church and I bought a copy of Will Work For Peace from him, not for poetry, but because I care about working for peace. I started reading through it thinking It'd just go on my shelf and that'd be the end of it, but the book grabbed me and kept me rivited. If I had known that poetry was this alive I'd have been into poetry. I've been reading some of the poems to my friends who also didn't think poetry was important and they are saying the same thing. Fantastic! There's no way to get through this book without having your old mindsets challenged. It's funny, powerful, sad, and uplifting. A book that deserves to be read by everyone. A book that really can make the world a better place!

If you want a compendium of "poetry" that sounds like it's been written by horny high school students, this book is for you. Otherwise, don't bother. There are f-words and spread legs in about every third poem, which would be fine if the book was billed as erotic poetry rather than spiritual, and if the poems were actually good. I write this as a Gen-X former Seattlite who is not easily offended, except by stupid juvenille works like "Ode to My Scrotum." The notable exception to this pedantic tripe (hence the one star) is the inclusion of Sherman Alexie's contributions - which can be found in his own readily available books. A glaring omission is anything by Denise Levertov (too Christian?). Also, Theodore Roethke is absent - a stunning lack given his racy writing (which is actually good). If you're looking for something worthy of the title of this unfortunate publication, check out Alexie, Levertov, Roethke, Hugo, or Anne Dillard instead.

Editor Charles Potts has assembled a number of very talented poets hailing (sort of) from the Pacific Northwest. Some are extremely obscure, others like Sherman Alexie and Bukowski are relatively well-known, and all follow a certain Beatnikish ethos: writing should be spare and powerful, and, yes, pissing, drinking beer and having sex can be as spiritual as any other activity. Which is not to say that that this anthology is all farts and one word lines. Plenty of strastopherically high culture is here, experimentalism, pathos, insight too. Potts lays out his philosophy in the introduction; if you've ever appreciated his work, or that of d.a. levy or Bukowski, you'll enjoy this volume. It will send you scurrying back to the internet to seek out more work by the contributors.

Charles Potts was my landlord (slumlord) for 2 years. He's completely whacked! The image of his office, which looked like an interrogation room, haunts me to this day. No, I have not read this book.

This could have been a great book, unfortunately the author got in the way.

Mr. Potts traces the supposed rise and rise and rise of the South in American politics, starting before the American Revolution and continuing to the present day. His overall thesis is that the South (as he defines it) has all but taken over the US government. He has well documented the statistics and quotes he uses, but from that point the book goes downhill.

Mr. Potts sadly belongs to the "Vendetta School of History". It is not merely enough for him to prove that someone's logic was flawed or that they were motivated by less than noble interests. Instead he spends time dredging up every possible accusation of impropriety ever lodged against that person. Mr. Potts seems to feel that rather than just proving someone was wrong, he must prove they were evil, and that makes the book very tiring at points.

For example, in a discussion of the development of the Chilsom Trail, he drifts off into a vitrolic critique of the word "cowboy", which he claims is an ethinc slur against black cattlemen. Even if this is true (and he offers no citations to support his claim), it is wholly irrelevant to his discussion of Texan domination of the cattle industry. Mr. Potts also engages in just plain name-calling at some points, such as suggesting Lee Atwater died of a brain tumor because he was, "so hateful that his own brain said that's enough," on page 69. I was no fan of Lee Atwater, but comments such as that are unnecessary and do nothing to further the overall purpose of the book. Additionally, Mr. Potts manages to make several outright bigotted statements against southern Europeans and Catholics. This might have been understandable if they advanced his argument, but they seem to have been inserted for no other reason than to be insulting.

Mr. Potts also overreaches himself sometimes in an effort to prove that Southerners control everything. He makes the claim that the entire Front Range area is nothing more than an annex of Texas, but he really offers no proof of that beyond discussing Texan dominance of the cattle and oil industries. He also expands the definition of the "South" to include any place ever influenced by people from the area of the Confederacy, no matter how long ago it happened. E.g. he includes southern California on the grounds that the L.A. basin was pro-Confederate in the Civil War. However, since probably less than 10% of modern-day Californians can trace their heritage in the state back that far, it seems silly to try to include it.

There are many other problems with Mr. Potts' book, and that is too bad, as I think his general thesis is correct. The South (which I would define as the former Confederate states) does appear to wield disproportionate power in the American political system. However, to find the worthwhile gems in the book, one must slog through a tremendous amount of mud. I would recommend it only to people who are intensely interested in the subject or who are fans of Oswald Spengler, whom Mr. Potts appears to feel is the pinnacle of historical analysis.